Japan’s public pension fund yesterday denied a report it would invest in US infrastructure as part of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s expected offer to US President Donald Trump to help boost US employment.
The leading business daily Nikkei Shimbun said, without citing sources, that the Government Pension Investment Fund (GPIF), the world’s largest, would buy debt issued by US companies to fund the vast spending program.
Abe, speaking about a scheduled summit with Trump next week, on Wednesday told lawmakers he intended to discuss “how Japan can create jobs” in the US as well as broader economic cooperation with his nation’s key security ally.
That includes “how Japan can cooperate on infrastructure investment that the [US] president has mentioned,” Abe said.
However, GPIF president Norihiro Takahashi said: “There are no such facts such as what some media reported.
“The GPIF is making investments, including in infrastructure, from a long-term view chiefly for the interest of pensioners, and there will be no change in our principle. We won’t make changes to our investment portfolio in response to government instruction,” he said.
Fund spokesman Shinichiro Mori reiterated Takahashi’s statement, saying: “We do invest in infrastructure projects from a pure investment point of view, but we never, ever, make an investment decision as part of government economic measures.”
Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga echoed the GPIF statement.
As for the widely reported economic cooperation package that Abe is expected to present to Trump, Suga said nothing had been decided.
However, Japanese analysts warned that Trump’s criticisms against Japan could turn harsher after he targeted Toyota Motor Corp in one of his fiery tweets over a project to build a new factory in Mexico and this week accused Japan of currency devaluation.
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